Town Square

Who turned fire station flag upside down — and why?

Original post made
on Nov 7, 2008

An unknown person or people "vandalized" the U.S. flag Thursday by turning it upside down on the flagpole at the Cuesta fire station, a fire chief said, and some suspect the motive is political protest against President-elect Barack Obama.

Posted by eric
a resident of another community
on Nov 8, 2008 at 3:30 pm

well, Betty, since there have been reports--mentioned in the article-- of McCain supporters doing exactly this in other parts of the country, it is a reasonable conclusion. Why is everyone on the right so sensitive?

Very funny USA. Looks like you're inviting a comparison between your wild accusations in Town Square and this report.

Your Town Square post, on the Molotov cocktail-thrower thwarted on Del Medio Avenue (and which I removed): "Yet another Mexican gang banger brought to you by Mtn. View's sanctuary and subsidized housing."

Our report on the upside-down flag: "Although their motive is unclear, political protest by those opposed to President-elect Barack Obama is one possibility."

Our conjecture, which was posed with a "possibly," was based on reports like this one from the Beaver County Times:

"PULASKI TWP.  The day after Barack Obama became president-elect of the United States, Larry DeBaker flew Old Glory outside his Pulaski Township home  upside down." Web Link ... and there are dozens of others.

Yours was based on nothing at all, and was proved false on Friday when police announced the attack was motived not by gang activity but by someone out to punish sex offenders.

Posted by USA
a resident of Old Mountain View
on Nov 10, 2008 at 3:23 pm

Ah, good catch. I had forgotten to use a linguistic get-out-of-jail-free card in my post. For example, "Obama is a coke-snorting, islamofascist, social who will raise taxes" is bad whereas "Obama is a coke-snorting, islamofascist, social who will raise taxes, possibly" is OK. Likewise, the headline "Attacks on sex offenders may be connected" doesn't really mean it is true, just possibly true.

So, with all the Prop 8 protests going on the last few days, you connect the Mountain View incident with some yahoo in a double-wide in a remote part of Pennsylvania who turns his own flag upside down? Could well be true, but if you are playing the "possibility" game, why not include the prop 8 protesters?

For what is it worth, I think you are right about the flag being connected to the Obama election. The upside down flag is more of a conservative thing which shows love of country but concern over the state of things, whereas the flag burning is more of a liberal thing showing hatred of country. But, of course, we are just playing the "possibility" game ... it could be Mexican gangs.

For example, "Obama is a coke-snorting, islamofascist, social who will raise taxes, possibly" isn't OK because of the "possibly." It's still a lot of crazy nonsense, which is why you used it as an example.

Another, unintended example of crazy is you accusing "Mexican gang bangers" of a crime completely at random and without the vaguest clue about it. It's now an established fact that you were wrong. (You seem more upset about being redacted than about being wrong.) In my opinion, this wasn't even a good guess on your part, it was just a gratuitous bit of race baiting, which is why I took it down.

As for the rest, what can I say? You think we're right about the flag thing, but why didn't we implicate other groups anyway?

Journalist are no different from anybody else. We observe the world and the people in it and make commonsense assumptions and deductions. That's why we (and you) figured that anti-Obama people are logical candidates as being the flag-flippers. It squares with our experience. By contrast, calling Obama an islamofascist doesn't square with anything any of us have seen in the real world.

We then draw secondary, unprovable assumptions from these observations, and these are our opinions (e.g. conservatives love America and are concerned about it, while liberals hate America). Opinions like these are always welcome on Town Square.

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